The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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WOMEN IN TH E I N DU S T RY Women in the Fuel Oil Industry A special focus BY S T EP HEN B E N NE T T T HREE WOMEN PROMINENT IN THE FUEL OIL INDUSTRY— SHARON Bloomer, Karen Gillespie Korrow and Carla L. Romita—are profiled here. Korrow is an owner and president, while Bloomer and Romita are in management. All three women are also active in their respective state industry associations. They said the fuel oil industry offers great opportunities for women, whether in management or in the field. Romita men- tioned that she sometimes traded notes with Alison Heaney, president of Skaggs-Walsh, a fuel oil company in College Point, N.Y. Heaney grew up in that family business and can drive a truck and fix a burner. How many other women will come up that way in the years ahead is impossible to say. It's often said that one should focus on the journey, not the destination. Here's a look at the paths Bloomer, Korrow and Romita have charted. SHARON BLOOMER Comptroller Apple Oil Co. A bachelor's degree in American literature and a master's in edu- cation don't come in so handy for Sharon Bloomer's career in the family business, Apple Oil Co., but the economics and mathematics courses she took as an undergraduate are paying back in multiples. "I've used a lot of the eco- nomics training," she said. "That comes in handy." Bloomer figures the instruction she received in economics and in math- ematics would have earned her the equivalent of minor degrees in those subjects, if there had been minor degrees in those days. She graduated from Yale University in New Haven, Conn., in 1983. After Yale, Bloomer earned a master's degree in education at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., and then spent four years teaching at the junior high school through college lev- els. She started helping at Apple Oil because a bookkeeper was retiring. Bloomer gradually became more involved, and finally decided to leave teaching and go full-time into the family busi- ness, based in West Haven, Conn. "I asked my father what exactly 14 DECEMBER 2011 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com I would be doing," Bloomer recalled, and he said, "'Whatever needs to be done.'" That was 26 years ago. Bloomer was soon managing finances and human resources among other "behind- the-scenes" aspects of the business. Today, Bloomer is comptroller of the company, chair of the board of the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association (ICPA), a board member of the New England Fuel Institute (NEFI) and chair of the Northeast region of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA). (Bloomer's professional activities have had happy rami- fications for her personal life, she noted. "Through the trade associations of ICPA and NEFI, I met and am engaged to Howard Peterson, Jr., president of Peterson Oil in Worcester, Mass.," she said. "His business is also a family business." Peterson is the cur- rent chair of NEFI.) As for the major challenges facing the fuel oil industry, they are well-known, and have to do largely with volume and price, Bloomer said. Volume is declining because equipment today is better designed and more fuel efficient. Further, because the housing market remains stagnant, potential to grow the fuel oil market remains limited, she said. Bloomer would know about housing. Her father, Samuel Livieri Sr., launched the family business as a residential construc- tion company in 1957. The fuel oil business was not added until more than twenty years later, in 1980. "The idea was opposite seasons," Bloomer said. Building crews, busy in warm weather, could be employed in the heating oil business during winter—the construction "off- season," she explained. Bloomer described Apple Oil as "a mid-sized, full-service" company serving the greater New Haven market, a radius of about one hour's driving time from the Elm City, and including Waterbury and a portion of the shoreline of Connecticut. The residential construction business is still headed by Bloomer's father. Current construction projects include a resi- dential development in Naugatuck, Conn., for which some 60 houses remain to be built, and a 28-unit apartment complex for seniors in West Haven. The multi-unit construction projects are often required by planning authorities to use forms of energy other than fuel oil, but the houses are built with oilheat systems, Bloomer said. So it could be said, truly, that Apple Oil builds its own fuel oil market.